Endgame (Book 3)

Chapter 55

I sank to my knees, gasping for breath. My hands shook as I rested them on my thighs.

I expected to feel...I don't know. Bad. Corrupted. Like something had fundamentally changed inside of me. But everything was the same. In fact, I felt a wholeness that wasn't there before. 

I wiggled each finger on my left hand, then my right. Pushed them into my palm, opened them up to the air, three times. 

Something was shifting around in my body. It wasn't at all unpleasant, but it was warm, and it moved around like it was searching for a way out. It was spreading out from my chest, slipping through my limbs and gently pressing against the back of my eyes. I blinked furiously, the sensation reminding me of a small bug flying into my eye. 

Two thin tears made their way down my cheeks, sliding along the edge of my jaw when they reached the bottom of my face. 

I reached up to run my hand through my hair, letting out a tight laugh that broke a little at the end. 

"Jay..." Sage said, reminding me that I was surrounded by three people. Metagor had transformed back into Ben sometime in the past few minutes. They all looked down at me, concern for me mirrored in all of their faces. 

"Sorry." I wiped the tears away with my forearm. "I just don't know how to feel right now. And, ah, please don't call me Jay."

"It's X." Cassie grimly smiled at Sage. "So, why'd you want us to stay?" she asked me. 

I looked at each one of them. "You three are the only ones left from...before." I didn't know what to call the time when they had all been a team. "I'm not going to make it, but I think I have to do this."

I opened my arms, beckoning them towards me. Sage and Cassie took awkward steps in my direction, but Ben didn't hesitate. 

I pulled them all into a crushing hug, wrapping my arms around Sage's and Ben's shoulders and burying my chin between Sage and Cassie. 

"I am so, so sorry for everything he did to you." Real tears leaked from my eyes. "Everything that's happened to you guys is horrible, and I wish I could make it up to you, I really do. I have all of his memories, and now that Di-Men is a part of me again, I guess I'm him for real now."

I let them out of my deathly grip and stepped back. "I know you're probably confused and still bitter about what happened." I avoided looking at Sage, who had tried to kill Jay on more than one occasion in the past couple of months. "And trust me, I'm just as upset about all this as you are. But we don't have time for any of that now."

As if on cue, my skin pulsed a bright blue, my veins and organs briefly illuminated by an inner glow. I sighed.

"At this point, either I go, or the world does." I looked down at the ground. "Needless to say, I think I'm the problem."

Cassie interrupted. "X," she said gently. 

I looked back up again.

She glanced at Sage and Ben as she spoke. "We don't know what's going on, but, for what's it's worth, we forgive you." 

I gave her a small smile. She would never know how much that meant to me, even if I didn't get to know her as well as I wanted.

Ben piped up next to her. "We can't hate your guts forever, anyway," he said with a laugh. "And if I've learned anything from watching you these last few weeks, I don't think I could. You're about to sacrifice yourself to save everything. Jay was a good person, but he would never have done that, with an evil influence or not." 

I nodded my head towards him. I remembered everything about him, clear as day. Ben wasn't someone whose opinion I would ever take lightly, and my predecessors would have agreed. 

Sage stared me down, focusing on my eyes. I waited, knowing she was the one whose exoneration would matter the most to me. 

"You're responsible for the deaths of Jake, Adam, your mother, and Ashley," she said, enunciating Ashley's name to criticize Cassie and Ben's easily extended mercy. "And maybe us, too, which is yet to be seen." She was talking about the water cascading down the walls around us. It had now almost reached the middle of the room. "Plus hundreds of others from the hospital, which you probably haven't thought about since it happened."

I cringed. I didn't linger on that as long as I should have when I crash-coursed my memories. She was just as good as right as far as that went. And I had taken the deaths of those close to me in stride, moving on when I found out about Jake and Adam as well as recently with Jay's mom and Ashley. I was so focused on my mission, so callous with the disposal of people's lives, that I didn't even care. 

"No, I don't forgive you, and I'm glad you're going to die, however that is." She really wasn't holding back. "But I don't blame you for anything that's happened. You may have been the cause of all this, but you're just as much a victim as any of us." 

I respected her opinion in as high a regard as Ben's, but only because the betrayal had hit her harder than anyone else. I was her brother, for heaven's sake. And she had been good enough to put on a facade, to work with me and be my sister for all this time, covering her true feelings. In another life, I might have had to worry about her. 

I said no more--there was nothing left to say. 

I closed my eyes, channeling a power Jay could never control. He didn't have the amount of interdimensional energy he needed to do it--the energy I used now. When I opened them again, I knew exactly what I needed to do. Jay had only stumbled upon his power to see the future in his dreams and when his life depended on it, but now I could summon it at will. 

I followed my blue persona's action, raising my hand to create a swirling black portal behind my associates. They turned at the sudden light and sound. 

"Walk through that, and it'll take you where you need to go. What's left of your home, Cassie, and to Jeremiah, Ben. I trust you know what you need to do with him." His eyebrows lowered in confusion as to how I knew where he was. I winked. "And for you, Sage, it'll take you to your father. Let him know that Jay will miss him." I thought for a second. "He would miss you both, actually." 

Her mouth formed a thin line, and she nodded. She walked through first. Ben lifted two fingers to his head and saluted me, then hopped through himself. 

Cassie gave me one last lingering look, saying everything she didn't want to put into words. Then, she did speak.   

"If you ever make it through this," she said, "try putting yourself in someone else's shoes more. Superheroes can have god complexes, too." 

And with that, she was gone, too. 

I grinned. She called me a superhero. 

I took slow, even steps to the gateway. I paused for only a moment as my foot hovered in front of it, looking at the grey metal surrounding me on all sides. This would be the very last thing I saw. 

What a horrible view.

Summoning the last of my bravery, I stepped through.

*****

No matter how many times Jay changed, he would never fit in. I would never fit in. Death and destruction would follow everywhere I went. Sage was right. 

When I came out the other side, I struggled to take in a breath. I only had seconds before I would pass to the other side. 

Seconds was all I needed.

In the cold vacuum of space, at the edge of the very universe, before frost could touch my fingers, I exploded. My body was instantly incinerated. X, Di-Men, and Jay in both of his forms were one, and then none. We didn't need the body anymore. We were just pure, unadulterated energy.

We became light, heat, and gas. We expanded, growing exponentially in seconds.

Di-Men said we had the power of the sun. So that's what we became.